I think we should think outside of the box and increase the character amounts for current players and drop those fame barriers for new players.
Even if it means to set the character limit higher for a temporary period till we get more players, but this way we encourage to play more, not less.
The conservative approach of limiting things such as shrinking, sinking etc continents will also limit the player base in one way or another.
We saw this with SEI/SWI.
Investing is the best way to solve a crisis...
